By Scott Allen, Washington Post Before they went on to become two of the greatest coaches in football history, Bill Belichick and Nick Saban were united in the common goal of turning around the Cleveland Browns. In February 1991, Browns owner Art Modell hired Belichick, who was fresh off winning his second Super Bowl title as Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, to be Cleveland’s head coach. The Browns were coming off a 3-13 season, their worst in franchise history.
“There’ll be some questions about my age and experience relative to this job and this type of responsibility,” who at 38 became the NFL’s youngest head coach, said at his introductory news conference. “When I came into professional football, I was 23 years old with the Baltimore Colts. I heard those same questions.
I feel like all those questions have been met. I’ll stand by my record. ” A week later, Belichick, who left the New England Patriots on Thursday after 24 seasons and six Super Bowl titles, made Saban, who on Wednesday retired from Alabama after the most decorated career in college football history, his first hire.
“Nick was the first coach I hired and the best coach I hired,” Belichick told NFL Films in 2021. “Nick was really my No. 1 partner there, and I relied on him so heavily on every level.
Yeah, I was the head coach at Cleveland, but whatever success we had, we wouldn’t have achieved without him. ” Belichick and Saban had met in 1982 when Belichick, already an assistant with the Giants, was in Annapolis visiting his father, Steve, a longtime assistant coach and scout for the Navy football team. Saban was Navy’s defensive backs coach that year.
The two became friends, and Saban later credited Belichick with getting him his first NFL job as defensive backs coach with the Houston Oilers in 1988. When the Browns hired Belichick, Saban was 39 and coming off his first year as the coach at Toledo, where he led the Rockets to a 9-2 record and a share of the Mid-American Conference championship. Leaving Toledo, which had given him his first head coaching opportunity, after one season weighed heavily on Saban’s mind.
“I haven’t cried for about 18 years, which is when my dad died,” Saban said after accepting the job with the Browns. “And I’ve been crying all afternoon. ” In Cleveland, Belichick demanded a relentless work ethic from his assistant coaches, many of whom went on to head coaching careers in college or the NFL.
His staff worked 17- and 18-hour days in the weeks leading up to the Browns’ 1991 regular season opener. “Bill’s very meticulous, very well organized,” Saban told the Akron Beacon Journal. “He really pays attention to detail.
He wants to cover all the bases to make sure we give our players every opportunity to win. ” A reporter asked Saban how long the rest of the staff could keep up with Belichick’s grueling pace. “I don’t know,” Saban replied.
“I’m just taking it day by day. I know one thing. If I don’t get a haircut pretty soon, they’re going to lock me out of there.
” In 2014, Saban called his four-year stint on Belichick’s staff in Cleveland the “worst of my life,” but it wouldn’t affect their friendship. “It was one of the best experiences of my coaching career,” Saban told NFL Films in 2021. “It was one of the most difficult, but I learned a tremendous amount, and it’s really helped me probably more, as much as anything in my career.
” Belichick’s approach and his coaching staff’s long hours of preparation didn’t yield immediate results. The Browns opened the season with a 26-14 loss at home to the Cowboys and were 4-4 after a win over the Steelers in Week 9. The defense, which allowed a franchise-worst 462 points in 1990, improved to 14th in points allowed, but Cleveland lost six of its final eight games to finish 6-10.
Despite starting the 1992 season 1-3, Cleveland was in playoff contention in December before closing the year with a three-game losing streak to finish 7-9. Saban’s defense was strong yet again, but the offense was hampered by injuries to starting quarterback Bernie Kosar and backup Todd Philcox. The next season began with great promise.
The Browns were 5-2 entering the bye week, but a four-game losing streak followed. In a surprise move, Belichick cut Kosar, a fan favorite, after the first of those losses, citing the quarterback’s diminished physical skills. Fans chanted “Bill must go!” at the Browns’ next home game, and Cleveland went on to finish 7-9.
After the season, Belichick promoted running backs coach Steve Crosby to offensive coordinator. Belichick hadn’t employed an offensive coordinator during his first three years with the Browns, but Crosby had assumed play-calling duties in the second half of the 1993 campaign. Things finally clicked in 1994.
Led by quarterback Vinny Testaverde and the league’s stingiest defense, Cleveland started 6-1. After a November loss to Kansas City dropped the Browns to 8-3, Saban interviewed for the head coaching job at Michigan State, where he had served as an assistant from 1983 to 1987. One week after the Spartans hired Saban in December, he and Belichick shared a hug on the Texas Stadium sideline after a 19-14 win over the Cowboys helped clinch the Browns’ first playoff berth since 1989.
“We expect to win every game so when we win it’s not like we’ve just won the lottery,” Belichick, who was stoic in news conferences even as a young coach, said afterward. The Browns defeated the Patriots, 20-13, in the first round of the playoffs before losing to the Steelers the following week. Pittsburgh rushed for 238 yards in the 29-9 rout.
“It’s a sad, emotional day for me to be leaving a lot of good people that I’ve had good relationships with,” Saban told reporters after the game. “I’ve got a lot of respect and admiration for the people in the organization who gave me this opportunity and for all the players on this team who did what we asked them to do. .
. . We’ve accomplished a lot here in four years.
” Saban went 6-5-1 in his first year at Michigan State and headed to LSU, where he won the first of his seven national titles, after the 1999 season. Belichick was fired after the Browns regressed to a 5-11 mark in 1995, a tumultuous season during which Modell announced he was moving the team to Baltimore. Their 31-33 record together in Cleveland didn’t portend the success they would achieve after leaving the Browns, but at least one former assistant who coached alongside both Belichick and Saban had a sense that good things were in store for both coaches.
“At the time, we were just trying to get game plans out there,” Rick Venturi, the defensive backs coach for the Browns in 1994, told The Washington Post in 2018. “But I’m telling you: I recognized their greatness. I knew when I was in that [film] room, when it came to football, these two guys were special – and they weren’t considered special yet.
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From: bostonglobe
URL: https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2024/01/12/bill-belichick-nick-saban-cleveland-browns-first-hire/
